Monday sold VG 2025 retirement fund. No more retirement funds for me ! Took a L o n g time to recover from 2022 !

Vanguard Target Income, VTINX, has not completely recovered as of yet. Both funds, when corrected for inflation are probably not close to "recovered". I haven't moved out of VTINX (deferred) but should have and should even now but at my age, 75, I don't know where I would go. More money or less money probably won't affect my life at all since I don't spend the new money coming in from pension and SS. Don't worry though, IRMAA will get the excess starting next year.

I still cannot comprehend how supposedly rational men did such an about face.
This is from Heather Cox Richardson "Letters from an American" ( highly recomended)
Presidential immunity is a brand new doctrine. In February 2021, explaining away his vote to acquit Trump for inciting an insurrection, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who had also protected Trump in his first impeachment trial in 2019, said: “Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office…. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation, and former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”
But it was not just McConnell who thought that way. At his confirmation hearing in 2005, now–Chief Justice John Roberts said: “I believe that no one is above the law under our system and that includes the president. The president is fully bound by the law, the Constitution, and statutes.”
In his 2006 confirmation hearings, Samuel Alito said: “There is nothing that is more important for our republic than the rule of law. No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law.”
And in 2018, Brett Kavanaugh told the Senate: “No one’s above the law in the United States, that’s a foundational principle…. We’re all equal before the law…. The foundation of our Constitution was that…the presidency would not be a monarchy…. [T]he president is not above the law, no one is above the law.”
This decision is mind boggling.
For example what is an "official act"? Can a President now order the military to shoot demonstrators on the spot claiming it is an official act? ( Trump wanted to remember?)
The military swears an oath to the Constitution and consequently can refuse "illegal" orders. What is an illegal order? Are all official acts, or acts the President says are "official" legal?
I think the investment consequences of this and "Chevron" are profound. Markets hate uncertainty. How can our times be more uncertain?

A huge problem during the GFC was the CDS (credit default swaps) sold by insurance companies and institutions. When the underlying credits collapsed, the CDS skyrocketed. At its worst, AIG had a liability of $150-200 billion - it was literally bankrupt many times over. It was rescued because AIG was also deeply into commercial insurance, and without a viable AIG, planes couldn't take off, ships couldn't leave the ports, etc.
Why did AIG do such a stupid thing? The CDS were the new game in town that not only had been mispriced, but they were not stress-tested (for another reason, that is what happened with LTCM, 1994-98 too).
Are there things today that haven't been stress-tested? Well, that is ODTE or 0-1-day options, that now have more than half the daily volume of some major indexes. Some day, people would say the same thing - why were people so crazy about the ODTE?

Monday sold VG 2025 retirement fund. No more retirement funds for me ! Took a L o n g time to recover from 2022 !

As long as we're discussing old movies with a theme, Z seems to be available for free. Haven't watched it yet to judge the quality on archive.org.
I sure loved it way back when. I wonder how it holds up.

@catch22
Your post reminded me of a recent Wealth Track Show where the premise of life + liberty (rule of law) = higher long term investment returns.

Perth Tolle created the Life + LIberty Indexes on the theory that democracy pays. Her Freedom 100 Emerging Markets Index is proof, trouncing its autocracy-heavy benchmark in its first five years.

Thanks for the read. Makes me want to continue to plow into MMF. Hardly any risk, and a lovely yield. (5%+.)
Still holding my junk.
FALN yield = 7.14% but unsure when that figure was last updated. It's been sitting there for a long time. Morningstar. Damn ETF! So much more volatile. I'm grinning and bearing it.
PRCPX. 7.01% yield.
TUHYX. 7.41%
And both of those latter funds are quite un-volatile. I like that, too.

Haven't seen the play, but it looks like at least one production runs longer (2:25 + 15 min intermission) than the movie (2:00). That play running length is consistent with a 2008 production described in the NYTimes.
To each one's own.
("Snappier" could refer to dialog differences, but "glacial" suggests speed.)
https://www.shakespearenj.org/events/detail/a-man-for-all-seasons (see addl tkt info)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1013162-man_for_all_seasons

Saw it when it came out. Watched it again in the last five-ten years. Maybe I would enjoy the movie if I saw it again. I have also seen a competent stage production, and read the script.
In this case glacial refers to all of the backgrounds and atmosphere the movie injects.There's no time for that in a stage production. The interaction between the characters speaking their lines has to carry the show.
Or perhaps I miss the character of The Common Man who cuts through all of that stuff in a production of the play.
Or maybe time, and a little history, has left me less enchanted with More all these years later.

A Man for All Seasons: $8.50 DVD @ Amazon- closed captions & subtitles.

Haven't seen the play, but it looks like at least one production runs longer (2:25 + 15 min intermission) than the movie (2:00). That play running length is consistent with a 2008 production described in the NYTimes.
To each one's own.
("Snappier" could refer to dialog differences, but "glacial" suggests speed.)
https://www.shakespearenj.org/events/detail/a-man-for-all-seasons (see addl tkt info)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1013162-man_for_all_seasons

I bought DODGX on April 15, 1991. I'm well ahead of VFINX, if the charts at M* can be believed.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/919160/000121390024057716/ea0208756-01_497.htm
497 1 ea0208756-01_497.htm 497
GUINNESS ATKINSON FUNDS
GUINNESS ATKINSON RENMINBI YUAN & BOND FUND
Supplement dated July 1, 2024
to the Fund’s Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information (“SAI”) dated May 1, 2024
The Board of Trustees of the Guinness Atkinson Funds (the “Trust”) has approved a plan to liquidate and terminate the Guinness Atkinson Renminbi Yuan & Bond Fund (the “Fund”). The plan of liquidation provides that the Fund will cease its business, liquidate its assets and distribute its liquidation proceeds to all of the Fund’s shareholders of record. Final liquidation of the Fund is currently expected to occur on or before August 20, 2024, but this date may be extended. Shareholders will receive liquidation proceeds as soon as practicable after the liquidation date.
The Fund will cease accepting purchase orders and will be closed to all new and existing investors on July 3, 2024.
As of July 3, 2024, the Fund will suspend the imposition of the 2% redemption fee on shares held fewer than 30 days.
As the liquidation of the Fund approaches, the Fund will deviate from its investment objective, investment strategies and investment policies as set forth in the Prospectus and will instead engage in business activities to wind down the Fund. During this period, a larger portion of the Fund’s assets will be held in cash and similar investments in order to prepare for orderly liquidation and to meet anticipated redemption requests. This may adversely affect the Fund’s investment performance. The impending liquidation of the Fund may result in large redemptions.
Shareholders of the Fund may redeem their shares at any time prior to the liquidation date. Shareholders remaining in the Fund may bear increased transaction expenses incurred in connection with the disposition of the Fund’s portfolio holdings. Any such transaction costs would reduce any distributable net capital gains. If a shareholder has not redeemed his or her shares by the liquidation date, the shares will automatically be redeemed, and proceeds will be sent to the shareholder of record. Liquidation proceeds will be paid in cash at the Fund’s applicable net asset value per share.
The redemption of shares held by a shareholder as part of the liquidation generally will be considered a taxable event for Federal income tax purposes and may cause shareholders to recognize a gain or loss. Before the final liquidation, the Fund may make distributions of income and capital gains. These distributions will have the tax and other consequences described in the Fund’s prospectus and statement of additional information. A shareholder should consult with the shareholder’s tax advisor to discuss the Fund’s liquidation and the tax consequences to the shareholder.
The dates set forth in this supplement may be changed without notice by the officers of the Guinness Atkinson Funds.
INVESTORS SHOULD RETAIN THIS SUPPLEMENT FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.

Meaning of: Rule of Law

Rule of law is a principle under which all persons, institutions, and entities are accountable to laws that are: Publicly promulgated. Equally enforced. Independently adjudicated. And consistent with international human rights principles.

July 1, 2024, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor
“Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law,” wrote Sotomayor. “Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop,” she added.
“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” Sotomayor concluded.
Sotomayor full text.
--- Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a separate dissent that the majority’s ruling “breaks new and dangerous ground” by granting immunity “only to the most powerful official in our Government.”
She said that her conservative colleagues were “discarding” the nation’s long-held principle that no one is above the law.
“That core principle has long prevented our Nation from devolving into despotism,” she said. “Yet the Court now opts to let down the guardrails of the law for one extremely powerful category of citizen: any future President who has the will to flout Congress’s established boundaries.”
The liberal justice described the impact of the court’s ruling in dark terms, saying that “even a hypothetical President who admits to having ordered the assassinations of his political rivals or critics or one who indisputably instigates an unsuccessful coup, has a fair shot at getting immunity under the majority’s new Presidential accountability model.”
“In the end, then, under the majority’s new paradigm, whether the President will be exempt from legal liability for murder, assault, theft, fraud, or any other reprehensible and outlawed criminal act will turn on whether he committed that act in his official capacity, such that the answer to the immunity question will always and inevitably be: It depends,” Jackson wrote.
NPR Presidental immunity
This SCOTUS ruling, at some point going forward; will apply to all U.S Presidents.
One may argue that 'Rule of Law' for this country is going, going GONE. The term 'President' may be in name only, at some point in the future.
One's investments may be affected going forward by U.S Presidential actions, more than ever before.
Your November VOTE will be the most important of your lifetime.
A HAPPY 4th of July.
Respectfully,
Catch

Added to cash stash, still getting me over 5% in SNVXX MM account. Gov't paper, so the name of the fund SAYS. Stocks are still too volatile, undependable right now; my bonds are at my desired level already.

(link)
Oppenheimer Asset Management is bullish on equities as H2 kicks off.
How about the truth...the SP500 has been positive at about 80% since 1980 every year. We don't have a clue what the SP500 will do in the short+long term.
With that in mind, we are going to be honest and stop making any predictions.
or
Maybe any time an "expert" talks on TV, the host should pull out his/her record and challenge them. If they do that, no expert would show up and they would not have any shows. What a joke?
Truthfully, I love these shows and experts because I giggle watching them.

”… for the next five years.”
I like the specificity here. I’ll have Siri remind me to sell in 5 years.

I asked Bing’s pretty decent AI robot to tell me what the maximum % of a portfolio that should be committed to a single CEF might be. Instead, an M* article came up. The fact that a better answer didn’t surface suggests to me they are not much discussed. I’d say up to 10% of a portfolio might be reasonable for a single CEF - but suspect that’s on the high end.
Anybody have a good answer? 5%? 10%? 0?
From Fidelity
Morningstar Article (2018)
Opinion Piece / Forbes (updated June 2024)

@Derf
Can you summarize the Schwab offer brackets? I’d be interested to see if my Schwab rep would match even though I didn’t get the email. Thx.

https://www.schwab.com/investor_reward
Here's how Schwab Investor Reward Plus works.
Make a qualifying net deposit of cash or securities into an eligible account:
Earn a cash bonus of:
$50,000–$249,999__$300
$250,000–$499,999__ $600
$500,000–$999,999__ $1,200
$1,000,000–$4,999,999__$2,500
$5,000,000 or more__$6,000

Laddered CDs ... 1, 3, 5 years ... all paying 5.3%, nominally, risk free as they come. No fee on new issues.
MINT. 5.3% yield.
RPHIX. 5.7%.
CBUDX. 5.9%
CBLDX. 7.5%.
Come quickly to mind.
c

LOL / @Mark - Thanks. I just discovered CEF Connect recently. Great source. What I take away from your link is that since its initial offering at $25 in 2012 PDI has seen highs near $33-34 and lows as low as $16. That’s a little deceptive because it probably has been paying out a big dividend over that period. Also, this CEF is currently trading at nearly 12% above its NAV. What took you so long to sell? :)
(Correct me if I’m substantially incorrect on my takeaway.)
The discount / premium on CEFs fluctuates. At the beginning of 2023 I mentioned here a Randal Forsyth Barron’s article calling attention to discounts of 15-20% on a number of CEFs. A couple he suggested to readers were BCAT and GUG. Since then, Barron’s has mentioned the attractive discount on CEFs more than once. My take today, however, is that that average discount to NAV has narrowed over the 18 months since Forsyth’s piece.
I’ve been using the same source to look at one I own and a couple others I could replace it with or use along side of it to dilute its impact on the portfolio. Yes - the discount / premium is essential to consider if playing in this volatile area. There are some etfs that try to game these vehicles. Sabra Capital’s CEFS has been in the news lately. Calamos recently introduced CCEF. I urge folks considering either to do their homework first.
Mark - Appreciate your sharing. You are braver than me. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned any CEF I own on the board because of their highly volatile nature and the general difficulty of understanding / valuing them. Additionally (to quote Rukeyser) any CEF I happen to own might be … “Hair today. Gone tomorrow.”